Blessings
The Vatican said on Monday in a landmark ruling approved by Pope Francis that Roman Catholic priests can administer blessings to same-sex couples as long as they are not part of regular Church rituals or liturgies.
A document from the Vatican's doctrinal office, which effectively reversed a declaration the same body had issued in 2021, said such blessings would not legitimise irregular situations but be a sign that God welcomes all ...
People are all agog about this, but I find it somewhat depressing. Despite this declaration, nothing in church teachings about LGBTQ people has changed. Still on the books (Catechism) ...
"Homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered .... They are contrary to the natural law .... Under no circumstances can they be approved." 2357
And "Homosexual persons are called to chastity." 2359
The Pope's Declaration (from the CDF) is a true paragon of pretzelization. It twists itself inside out to both say that the church can't bless "irregular unions" like same-sex marriages because they aren't real marriages, but yet still somehow can bless them in some kind of spiritually trunkated fashion, and that this new blessing thingy does not in any way change official church teaching ... Declaration, Fiducia Supplicans, On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings
Maybe LGBTQ Catholics will feel differently about this than me ... I'm not gay and not really a Catholic anymore ... but from my pov, this is another instance of Pope Francis creating the illusion of change while actually changing nothing. People latch on to the illusion, and the church deflects criticism while continuing to harm LGBTQ people with its teachings.
For those who think it is beyond the Pope's power to change church teaching, and Francis is doing the best he can against the machine ... not true. He could allow gay people to marry in the church, the same way he could allow women to be priests. He doesn't want to do that, and he won't.
posted by crystal | 3:14 AM
2 Comments:
I don't think he actually could do that, not without causing open schism. Already there are some people threatening that over this little bit of accommodation.
He is the only person who could do it. No one else - at Vatican 2, the members decided that it would be ok now for Catholics to use contraception, and it was the Pope who didn't let that happen.
When Francis wants to change stuff, like the church's stance on the death penalty or on communion for divorced and remarried people, he does it. It's explained away as a "development" but it's a change.
If Francis decided that there isn't anything wrong with being gay and that therefore gay people can be married, a majority of Catholics in the US and Europe and South America would agree with him ... https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/11/02/how-catholics-around-the-world-see-same-sex-marriage-homosexuality/
Who would be against it? The US bishops and other conservatives, but they are a minority in the church, if you count the faithful.
But I don't think Francis wants to change the teaching about same-sex marriage. He's been pretty dismissive about it in the past, even calling same-sex civil unions "the devil's work".
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